


Hide Your Heart on Your Sleeve (we won't look for it there)

by Curlscat



Category: The Sisters Grimm - Michael Buckley
Genre: Nonbinary Character, Other, genderfluid Sabrina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11917608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curlscat/pseuds/Curlscat
Summary: Puck visits the Grimms in NYC, and Sabrina is acting weirder than usual. Dressing different, doing weird things with her hair... And for some reason, Basil keeps talking about a "they."





	Hide Your Heart on Your Sleeve (we won't look for it there)

Puck doesn’t understand Sabrina. Not that this is new. He’s never really gotten her, even when he was the only one who saw clearly what someone needed to say to her. He figured it was partly just ‘cause she was, y'know, a girl. And he’d never understood girls. Heck, for most of his life his mom and Moth were the only girls he interacted with.

He’s rolled with it, though. It’s interesting, having to figure her out over and over again. And usually he can work with what he’s presented with. Sabrina’s always fun to mess with, no matter how little he gets her. And they’re both trying to make this… whatever it is, work.

This visit, though, something’s definitely up.

Well, something new. Something’s always up with Sabrina. If she were ever calm and put together he’d start worrying that she, like, got replaced by alien mandroids or something.

He gets to the Grimm’s house and is greeted, as usual, by a very exuberant Daphne. She’s taller, softer, and just as happy to see him as ever. Sabrina, though, isn’t a few steps behind her, pretending to be too cool to act happy to see him. Basil’s back there, nearly as excited to see him as Daphne. But Sabrina’s… nowhere.

“They’re gonna be so happy when they hear you’re here!” Basil says.

Daphne gives Basil a skeptical look and says, “You know they’re nervous.”

“It’s dumb,” Basil says. “It’s not like they've  _changed_.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Sabrina’s voice comes from a different room in the house.“

“Sabrina!” Basil demands. “Come say hi to Puck!”

Sabrina walks through the doorway and- wow. Whoever “they” are, Sabrina’s definitely changed.

Something happened to her hair. It’s, like, gone. She had to have at least two feet of hair last time he saw her, and now all he can see is a few blonde tufts poking out from under a striped beanie. She’s wearing a plain, loose t-shirt and a pair of men’s pants that make her look even thinner and stick-shaped than usual. Her eyebrows, already incredibly thick, look even darker than usual, and her mouth, which is normally soft and lush and almost irresistible, looks paler, harder.

And she looks really nervous. Puck can’t remember the last time Sabrina was nervous about seeing him.

“Wow,” he says before he can stop himself. “If I didn’t know you were a girl, Grimm, I’d-” he stops himself before he finishes that sentence, thinking he’s gonna get it for that. Why can he never stop his mouth when he actually wants to be nice? He just wanted to break the tension, and-

Except Sabrina’s… smiling? It’s a little wobbly, and bittersweet, but she looks happy. And Daphne looks ecstatic.

“I told you,” Basil sing-songs.

“Shaddup, ya little brat,” Sabrina says, pulling Basil in to give him a noogie. This is a very funny thing to watch because Sabrina’s only about half a head taller than Basil.

Puck figures things’ll go back to normal after that. So Sabrina cut off her hair for some reason. But she’s… she’s avoiding him.

So he does the logical thing and digs through her closet. There’s more weirdness here, two very clearly divided sets of clothes, one flowery and flowy and the kind of thing Sabrina pretends she doesn’t like but secretly loves to wear, and one a lot more like the things Puck himself wears. If they weren’t in Sabrina’s super tiny size, he’d think two people were using the room. There’s a small pile of makeup on her dresser, like always. Puck wishes she’d get rid of it, but she seems to like it. And right now, it looks like she’s only using a bottle of something the same shade of brown as her skin and a stick of something a different brown.

He stops himself before he goes through her dresser because yeah he’s curious and a jerk, but not  _that_  much of a curious jerk.

Now that he thinks about it, things have been kinda weird for a while. Sabrina’s been more cagey than usual, for one thing. And he’d have said something, but Daphne’s usually a pretty good barometer of how Sabrina’s feeling or acting, and she’s been perfectly happy. She, like Basil, has been talking about this mysterious “they” for a while, but he doesn’t really care enough to know “they” are.

Talking to Daphne is his next step. “What’s up with your sister?” he asks bluntly.

“I think you need to talk to Sabrina about that,” Daphne says. She doesn’t deny that something’s going on, which is nice, but still.

So finally, after two days of trying to get Sabrina alone, Puck corners her after dinner. Today she isn’t wearing the beanie, and it turns out she hasn’t cut her hair after all. She just had it tucked up in her hat.

“Grimm,” he says.

Sabrina cringes. “Can we… not? Please?”

“See that’s what we need to talk about!” Puck explodes. “Why the heck are you scared of me?”

“I’m… I’m not,” Sabrina says, and she looks a little more comfortable. Still nervous, but less like a caged rabbit. “I just-”

“Just what?”

Sabrina bites her lip, and tries to say something. “I’m scared of what you’re going to think.”

Puck stares at her incredulously. “Since when have you ever cared about what I thought about you?”

Sabrina sighs and sits back down at the kitchen table. “This is different,” she says. “This… if you’re not okay with this, then…  _we’ll_  never be okay.”

Puck fights the urge to run at the mention of the fact that they’re a  _we_. This is obviously important. He can suck it up for ten seconds. “If you keep avoiding me, we’ll never be okay anyway.”

Sabrina laughs. “Yeah. Okay.” There’s a long silence, and Sabrina asks him, “Have you ever heard the term ‘genderfluid’?”

Puck hasn’t, so Sabrina explains. It basically means that sometimes a person’s a boy, and sometimes they’re a girl, and sometimes they’re neither. And apparently Sabrina’s genderfluid. And he’s going to have to learn to stop calling her-  _them_ \- “she.” Sabrina wants to be called “they.”

“Okay,” Puck says, when it’s apparent she’s finished. “That’s kinda cool, actually.”

Sabrina stares at him, making eye contact for the first time since they started talking. “You’re… you’re not skeeved out?”

Puck raises an eyebrow at Sabrina. “Grimm, I just helped babysit a bunch of cow-pig hybrid toddlers, and you think I’m gonna be freaked by the fact that you’re not a girl all the time? I mean, your brother was just telling me about a bunch of  _fish_  do that!”

Sabrina smiles, tentatively. “And you… you believe me? You don’t think I’m just doing it for attention, or anything?”

Puck shakes his head.

“And you’re okay with dating someone who’s a guy sometimes?” Sabrina asks, this question even more tentative than the previous one.

“Okay, first off, we’re not  _dating_ ,” Puck says. “Dating is for grown-ups and I am not a grown-up. I am a very large child who happens to have facial hair. Second, it’s not like anything’s changed, right? I mean, you didn’t just, like, suddenly decide you were a boy sometimes, yeah? It’s been forever?”

Sabrina nods. “I mean I just figured out what it was recently, but yeah.

Puck shrugs. “Then nothing’s different.”

“I thought you were straight,” Sabrina says.

Puck has gotten through this conversation pretty well, he thinks. He’s been a little afraid of saying the wrong thing and making Sabrina’s fears come true, but so far it seems like he’s been doing okay. But this… Answering this question might be more than he can do. It seems important, though. So he’s gonna have to involve  _feelings_  and talk about them. Because this is important to Sabrina, and they’ve come far enough in the five years since the Everafter War that he can do this.

He can.

Really.

“Grimm, I don’t- I’ve never  _liked_  anyone,” Puck says, fighting to get the words out. “Not before I met you. No crushes, no hots for anyone, nothing. And I mean, I was old enough. I didn’t quite stop in time. I kinda figured that maybe I just was… broken, or something, with love. And I still don’t… I mean, it’s always just been you. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a boy, a girl, both, or neither. You’re still you.”

Sabrina’s looking at him like he just puked a rainbow and farted sunbeams. Puck kind of thinks it was worth talking about his feelings for that look. He’d like it if Sabrina looked at him like that forever.

“So… we’re done with feelings now?” Puck asks.

Sabrina grins at him. “Yeah.”

“Thank God,” Puck says. “That was painful.”

“Shut up, gasbag,” Sabrina says, slapping him on the bicep.

Puck grins at them, because really, nothing’s changed. “Make me, stinky.” 


End file.
